US, Allies Are Terrified of Venezuela’s Participatory Democracy

by Edu Montesanti

teleSUR | August 17, 2017

Chavistas march in support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. | Photo: AVN

teleSUR speaks with Venezuelan sociologist Maria Paez about regional aggression against the socialist-led government. 

As Venezuela continues to face pressure from the United States and its regional allies, teleSUR spoke to Maria Paez, a Venezuelan sociologist who explained the significance of the country’s National Constituent Assembly, ANC, and resistance to U.S. aggression.

The root of the climate crisis is capitalism, not demographics

by Michael Friedman

MR Online | August 15, 2017

\

Growing concerns about climate change and other environmental trends have set off the next round of old Malthusian diagnoses and solutions.

As a case in point, ecological economist William E. Rees recently wrote in the Canadian alternative magazine The Tyee (“Staving Off the Coming Global Collapse” July 17, 2017):

The “competitive displacement” of other species is an inevitable byproduct of continuous growth on a finite planet. The expansion of humans and their artifacts necessarily means the contraction of everything else. (Politicians’ protests notwithstanding, there is a fundamental contradiction between population/economic growth and protecting the “environment.”)

People must self-organize and keep up the pressure on their governments if we are to bring about radical change

Éric Toussaint interviewed by Victor Lustres

by Éric Toussaint

MR Online | August 17, 2017

Eric Toussaint (Namur, Belgium, 1954) is co-founder and spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM), an international network which includes local committees in more than 30 countries and fights to elaborate radical alternatives to illegitimate debt, whether public or private. Eric Toussaint holds a doctorate in Political Science from the Universities of Liège and Paris VIII, and is a member of the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He has authored about fifteen reference books on debt and the financial crisis, and hundreds of articles on these topics. He has also served as a consultant to the governments of Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela and certain Spanish town councils. He was the Scientific Coordinator of the Committee for Truth on Greek Public Debt.

Remembering Khokan Majumdar

by Anirban Biswas

Frontier | Vol. 50, No.6, Aug 13 – 19, 2017

Khokan Majumdar, one of the architects of the historic Naxalbari peasant uprising, passed away on 29 May at the North Bengal Medical College Hospital at the age of eighty-six. As per reports from his colleagues, the doctors had made their best efforts to save his life, but failed. Majumdar’s original name was Abdul Hamid, and since the mid-fifties of the last century, he became known as Khokan Majumdar. His phenomenally long political life started when he was only a boy of fiteen. While in jail, he first came into contact with the Communist Party of India. He was imprisoned several times before the outbreak of the Naxalbari uprising. What was significant about the uprising was that alongside the struggle for the seizure of landlords’ land, the peasant activists and leaders of the region decided to resist the police, if necessary. On 24 May, 1967, a large posse of policemen tried to enter the area and peasants, led by Khokan Majumdar, resisted, killing one inspector. On the very next day, the police fired upon a group of peasant women, killing seven along with the children they had been carrying in their laps. The uprising was hailed by the then Communist Party of China as ‘spring thunder over India’, and led to a serious split inside the CPI(M). The breakaways came to be known as Naxalites.

The Struggle Continues

by Harsh Thakor

Frontier | Vol. 50, No.6, Aug 13 – 19, 2017

Today one must salute the CPI (Maoist) for shimmering its flame in Dandkaranya to create a new model of power of people’s power and sow the seeds of revolution in other regions.

The most significant progress has been made in Dandkaranya, Jharkhand, Orissa where the torch of the CPl (Maoist) is blazing. Its red flame is shimmering like in those parts like never before with alternative people’s structures built in Dandkaranya. The wave has even spread in regions of Kerala and the Maharashtra border revealing a fire that it is inextinguishable. Critiques like Sutnanta Banerjee and K N Ramchan-dran (CPI-ML-Red Star) openly condemn the Maoist party as a terrorist force or consisting of armed squads of roving bands. There is an erroneous tendency that equates the Maoist party line with ‘Che Guevarism or foco-ism’. True at times there are deviations but the party strives to implement Maoist protracted people’s war strategy.

India: How One Village’s Successful Tryst With Self-Governance Inspired Others to Embrace Gram Swaraj

by ISHAN AGRAWAL

The Wire | August 5, 2017

A village council meeting being held in Barkheda village to discuss community issues. Credit: Ishan Agrawal

A few years ago, Barkheda village in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh was a typical example of how rural communities neglect their common resources and let them degrade or be used by a few influential households. Then a few villagers decided it was time for change.

With the help of development workers from a non-profit with expertise in natural resources management, some of them figured out that the commons could be used to the mutual benefit of the community at large. They started raising their voices at village council meetings.

New School announces Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy fellowships

The New School for Social Research | August 15, 2017

In the 1970s, Paul Sweezy, one of the 20th century’s most influential Marxist economists, came to The New School for Social Research to teach. Prior to that, he was an influential tutor at Harvard where his students included none other than Robert Heilbroner, who went on to become an NSSR faculty member and later, the namesake of the school’s Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies.